EXOSKELETON

[large_ghostman]

I am sorry no one is taking you seriously!! Come on guys where is your compassion for the hamster?

First off you should have mentioned it had been squished by a car or other heaving vehicle! Personally I would deal first with the overall shape of the hamster before trying to fix its leg. Easiest way to do this I would think would be too stuff it inside a toilet roll tube to give it back a more elongated hamster shape, I would cut 4 small holes in the tube and stick its legs through (does it only have two now? or are both sets of legs now squished together?).

I see little point helping it to walk before we fix its ears and give it back hearing, no point having it walk straight into a bionic cat ambush! Mechano might be a good start point as lego is more bulky! Also use small steppers from DSLR camera lenses that are used for auto focus etc, I have used a couple and they are pretty good, I am not too sure if they would work on a hamster wheel but worth a try.

Do you intend to fit a safety switch? I think with bionic legs a large red stop button should be included in case the legs get a short and legs go full chat on the wheel!! Best have a way for the hamster to stop this.
You also need to think of brakes, no good having a speedy hamster if it cant stop fast! When making the helmet make sure you allow enough room for when its cheeks are stuffed full, they tend to really bulge out when grabbing food. It might be better to fix a shredder in its mouth to stop it bulging its cheeks out.
My final thought is to use small watch cells, this is just because I can think of only one place to put the coin cells and still get to them, I think it kindest on the hamster to use the smallest cells you can get your hands on!!

Use gloves and grease when changing batteries please!

 

[JoeJester]

I read Popular Science and Popular Mechanics and using the brain (implants) to control a prosthetic is real now.

"Right out of the box?" or in this case, once you wake up from surgery.

 

[cowboybob]

Eat LG's smoke, you non-believers (you all know who you are )!

He's got a handle on this hamster mod, and will not be deterred by your petty negativism(s).

And the auto-ejecting battery compartment concept is, you must admit, clever...!!

And a goodnight to all...

 

[JoeJester]

LG needs to put up a special link for ETO members to "crowd fund" his idea, and a separate one for all others. In a month's time we can see which one has the most "funding."

 

[large_ghostman]

I cannot believe I am sitting here entertaining the idea of starting a kickstarter for this!! just for a laugh I am tempted to see how many bite or sign up with tales of there poor crippled hamsters looking for new exoskeletons! I recognize this as one of those moments I should shut down the PC and go do something else before I actually click on kickstarter!

It was so wrong of you to plant the seed (or processor) in my head. Now the bad side of me would want to do a cat one and hold a race between them .

 

[RichTheDude]

 

[large_ghostman]

See what I mean about cheek restriction? Also I dont like that much heat near the coin cells! Good job on the super ears I might steal that ear design. Dont forget our hamster is squished so need more body support, but its a good start. Do you mind if I photoshop the pic of your hamster for my Kickstarter?

 

[large_ghostman]

So starting to get ideas together.

I was thinking of something like this for the legs.

I like my Leds so this sort of thing for the eyes.

Still working some the other things out but I did come up with this device to help change battery packs.

I knew I should have shut down the computer!! By tonight Bionic Hamster Kickstarter will be born!

 

[shortbus=]

You guys keep this up and I'm going to report this thread to PETA ! A crippled hamster is no laughing matter!

 

[large_ghostman]

Just had a nasty thought, is this hamster in the UK? If it is you do realise its now disabled? therefore it will now have to fund its own exoskeleton and probably loose some benefits as well. It might be better off staying squished

 

[large_ghostman]

Seriously...........................

Try and do it for a dog first, many reasons I say that but biologically its alot easier (still not easy). Also more people likely to help fund research. You will need an old style EEG machine from a hospital, not a kickstarter mash up one. You can get a old one pretty cheap.

Dogs have bigger heads so a EEG cap could be made to fit, you wont be implanting jack though. Implanting stuff inside an animal just is a non starter, but a leg that moves in time with the three others is doable (NOT easy). You will need the eeg machine to identify the signals on a normal dog, like a human it will signal the muscles in sequence, work out where these signals are..........

I honestly dont have a clue WHY I am even suggesting this!! But I look at life this way................

Most people set goals within 100 meters of what they can do, if they only get half way they have traveled or succeeded by 50% or 50 meters, I set my horizon 100 miles away, this way if I only get half way there then I have still traveled 50miles instead of 50 meters. You got to think major scale and aim as high as you can, dosnt matter if you fail, you still get further than setting low goals and succeeding in them.

If you want to come up with something for crippled dogs then seriously start a kickstarter, if it catches peoples interest that will tell you if its even worth bothering with, now having actually typed all that (no idea why) I am going to take my medication and goto bed

You want something like this **broken link removed**
its a bargin and you would need that, despite the fact you wont be implanting you do want to see the brain signals. Then you can work out the best way to do it, I REALLY want and need to stop thinking about this bloody hamster so please just go start a kick thingy

 

[tech master 117]

Alright this thread is getting cancerous lets stop this here I am stopping this project right here and thinking something else.Lets see if we can do it after 2030.

 

[tech master 117]

Seriously...........................

Try and do it for a dog first, many reasons I say that but biologically its alot easier (still not easy). Also more people likely to help fund research. You will need an old style EEG machine from a hospital, not a kickstarter mash up one. You can get a old one pretty cheap.

Dogs have bigger heads so a EEG cap could be made to fit, you wont be implanting jack though. Implanting stuff inside an animal just is a non starter, but a leg that moves in time with the three others is doable (NOT easy). You will need the eeg machine to identify the signals on a normal dog, like a human it will signal the muscles in sequence, work out where these signals are..........

I honestly dont have a clue WHY I am even suggesting this!! But I look at life this way................

Most people set goals within 100 meters of what they can do, if they only get half way they have traveled or succeeded by 50% or 50 meters, I set my horizon 100 miles away, this way if I only get half way there then I have still traveled 50miles instead of 50 meters. You got to think major scale and aim as high as you can, dosnt matter if you fail, you still get further than setting low goals and succeeding in them.

If you want to come up with something for crippled dogs then seriously start a kickstarter, if it catches peoples interest that will tell you if its even worth bothering with, now having actually typed all that (no idea why) I am going to take my medication and goto bed

You want something like this **broken link removed**
its a bargin and you would need that, despite the fact you wont be implanting you do want to see the brain signals. Then you can work out the best way to do it, I REALLY want and need to stop thinking about this bloody hamster so please just go start a kick thingy

I don't even know how to use it???????

 

[large_ghostman]

I don't even know how to use it???????

Buy a cap and stick it on your head! you need two people to start with, one operates the machine and gives instruction and one sits and follows instruction. So to start with brain control stuff like move a ball around the screen by thought (actually its also facial and head muscle control ), listen first to very very relaxing music and semi dark room, the person operating the machine is look for deep concentration (Alpha Waves), once you have Alpha waves then you go through a routine of moving fingers etc etc until the Alpha wave has gone.

This gives you a base line and the channels show which area of the brain was most active during each exercise, it takes alot of practice!! Moving a ball around the screen by thought takes around 3-4 months to do reliably. With a dog its a little bit easier, you get it to lay by you with the cap on, do something on the pc and watch the machine screen. When the dog has laid down a while it should drift into dog world! At this point get it to jump up and walk 4 paces and then sit. On the screen you will see a channel that correlates to muscle movement, this is your start point.

Sounds easy when you type it, but there is a reason a medical device for an animal is very expensive. This area is highly experimental but there is actually alot of people and groups willing to pay for decent experiments. Dont use the micky mouse R Pi or Arduino machines! No matter what they claim they wont come near the machine I linked too and cost about the same. A skull cap will cost around £70

 

[large_ghostman]

Alright this thread is getting cancerous lets stop this here I am stopping this project right here and thinking something else.Lets see if we can do it after 2030.

Become a politician, they put things off because its too hard, you have a problem to solve, all you need is a start point. Even if the start point is wrong its still a start. Everything worth doing has been impossible right upto the point it succeeded. Saling around the world just5 wasnt an option many many years ago, the brightest and smartest thinkers at the time all agreed the ship would fall off the edge of the world! This wasnt a few people this was the vast majority of the smart people, but someone tried it and we discovered you dont fall off the edge of the world.

When cars were first invented the general consensus was if you went over 90MPH you would die from lack of air or whatever, this was accidentally dis proven when a car designed for speed had a broken time trial, when they redid the numbers they discovered it had reached 97MPH.

My grandad was brought up knowing going to the moon was comic fiction territory, and yet in his lifetime he lived to see the space shuttle. We had protons neutrons electrons, and a suspicion of a few other things when my dad was young, a quark was a funny word and dark matter existed in SF films. Also black holes were a mathematical possibility but likely to exist as a single one in the entire universe.

My point is many people will tell you something wont work or cant be done, I often think the statement 'It cant be done' should be read as 'I cant do it myself'. If you get a gut feeling about something then try it! the worse thing that can happen is you fail, failing is another name for experience and everybody knows you cant beat experience, someone is always going to discover how to do something that cant be done.

I dont currently think over unity can be achieved, not do I think while we are stuck with normal physics it will ever be done. But there are two odd things

Normal physics goes all screwy at the very very small level and the very very large level. So IF it was ever done it would be in the quantum world (look at quantum computing), whether you could adapt the quantum world to the macro world in the future is anyones guess. The two things that make me think we wont ever get over unity in the macro world is........ In the macro world we exist in NORMAL physics work and rule, in normal physics over unity is a non starter. I see nothing remotely likely to suggest you can interact the quantum world with the macro world (shame).

Second thing is black holes, in black holes its assumed matter is squished like your hamster into a dense object, there is evidence to suggest this dosnt happen. Instead the current thinking is the mass of what is pulled into a black hole is converted into gravity energy, so it stops existing as matter (with a mass) and is converted into another form of energy (gravity), for over unity people this is bad news. If a black hole follows the conservation of energy rules, then its unlikely over unity can be done outside of quantum physics, the reason it might be possible at the quantum level is purely because so far the physics go all screwy and many very strange things are possible.

So everything other than over unity is fair game for a try, your hamster thing is difficult but not impossible, if you had the money then I think its Alex or Ron who's signature would apply. Given enough enough time or resources any problem can be solved (or some **** like that). So difficult yes, expensive, probably. But impossible?? No I dont see why it cant be done, but I would question why do it on a hamster that lives 12 months at best.

Sorry for wittering on, you and me are around the same age, listen to people with experience but always be your own man. If you really want to try something then try it, everything you do is experience. The number one thing to remember is this is the internet, so just because 100 people say it cant be done dosnt mean it cant be done, it means 'we cant do it' , maybe you cant do it, but maybe you can. There is surely only one way to ever know for sure .

I should add 99 times out of 100 they are proved correct, but I do it to find the 1 time they are wrong . They have experience and we have time, use both things to your advantage . Please stop being so easily put off FFS, you caved almost instantly! To discover something takes courage of conviction and this you lack, so go find or make a bigger set of VEG and try again.

 

[throbscottle]

Just for the record, over-unity is the trendy term for the capture of zero point energy, which apparently does exist. You just need a means of harvesting it, which is currently impossible (unless you believe the over-unity folks) but who's to say someone won't eventually figure out a way? Or is that what you said LG?

Hamster exoskeltons may be harder to achieve...

Although actually, I don't see why it has to be neurally controlled? The same class of mistake has been the bug-bear of robotics until some inventors realised that less-controlled limbs with built in elasticity worked much better than very highly controlled limbs. The elastic takes care of the fine positioning.

Now I'm not saying you should elastic your friend's hamster, but a suit that responds to the actual movements is surely all that's needed. So you have a sensor that detects when he/she moves a limb, and an actuator which amplifies that movement. You just give it a bit more gain for the gammy leg. Of course, you don't want it to be unstable - when hammy stops moving a limb, so does the actuator.

Unstable conditions would include where the limbs stops moving, but the suit has a little over-run in the actuator, so this is detected as a desire for movement in the opposite direction, so hammy gets all his/her limbs wiggling all over the place. The other case is that it detects its own movement as being the hamsters limb movement, and goes all the way to the stops all the time, so hamster gets to have fully straight/fully bent limbs all the time. I think PID is what you need to avert these situations.

Maybe elastic is the way to go as mechanical negative feedback, or something.

So that's a much simpler target to aim for. Maybe you should try to do a version to fit your finger, and then see if you can do one that matches the range of movement of your shoulder, (after all, the suit should be able to move in all the ways hammy can) then decide if Iron Hamster is a viable idea.

If none of this works out in the end, you will have had a great learning experience which you can put to good use elsewhere, and you should take up imagineering, which looks like a brilliant thing to do

And what the heck's a nano-composite? Sounds like something straight out of Arrow, or Flash!

 

[large_ghostman]

Sort of what I was saying, over unity may one day be used but its likely to be in quantum computers etc rather than an energy source you can power macro things with (or even micro). You cant escape physics and in the 'real' world the physics wont let you capture or use zero point energy, but the physics dont apply to the quantum world (little of real world physics apply in the quantum world), so over unity IF it was ever a remote possibility would only be possible on a quantum level rather than any we find useful.

I doubt even in my life time quantum computers will reach a usable state, so much needs to happen before they can be useful. If you use computing as an analogy then we are at the abacus stage with quantum computers, so Long long way to get to a old 386 processor let alone a super computer. I like quantum mechanics, I like the fact normal rules dont apply, but that dosnt mean your ever going to be able to bring the quantum world into the macro world, by definition the quantum world only works when you dont think about it. The moment you think about it or try to influence it then it has to make a choice, it goes from quantum physics to real physics.

A bit like women, all makeup and nice perfume until they become a fixture, then bang they change states and become wives and stick curtains up in ya workshop, I will stick with quantum girls for a while and the moment they change state...................... Yeah I know.. the moment they change state its game over .

nano composites are like carbon fiber but made from tiny dust.

The neural thing would allow you to make an arduino controlled dog, might as well as there isnt many arduino shields you cant get, might as well make a dog control one , add a playstation controller............. Would make a decent real life Tom & Jerry game

 

[throbscottle]

You could be onto a great thing there LG - Dog Shield, for people who can't be bothered to actually train their pet...
But the OP doesn't want to control hammy, he just wants to make an assistive device for his/her gammy leg. Hammy, gammy.. I love a good rhyme...

(Bah dahh ba-da Woke up this morining, fell out of bed
bah dahh ba-da Landed on my dog but my dog was dead
bah dahh ba-da Went to look at hammy to lift the dead dog blues
bad dahh ba-da But when I got to hammy his leg, yes his leg, well his leg was gammy!
bad da-da bah da-da bah da-da bah da-da And it's raaaaaining, rain coming down in his cage, oh yeah
)
Ok I'l stop. I'm so bad at music it can cause physical injuries

Quantum computing, may be making more progress than you think: https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/...omputer-could-make-todays-encryption-obsolete

When I have good scratch I make tiny dust. I could mix it with epoxy I suppose...

 

[cowboybob]

When I have good scratch I make tiny dust.

Thanks for that image, Throb.

Just what I needed as I peppered my breakfast omelet ...

 

[large_ghostman]

You could be onto a great thing there LG - Dog Shield, for people who can't be bothered to actually train their pet...
But the OP doesn't want to control hammy, he just wants to make an assistive device for his/her gammy leg. Hammy, gammy.. I love a good rhyme...

(Bah dahh ba-da Woke up this morining, fell out of bed
bah dahh ba-da Landed on my dog but my dog was dead
bah dahh ba-da Went to look at hammy to lift the dead dog blues
bad dahh ba-da But when I got to hammy his leg, yes his leg, well his leg was gammy!
bad da-da bah da-da bah da-da bah da-da And it's raaaaaining, rain coming down in his cage, oh yeah
)
Ok I'l stop. I'm so bad at music it can cause physical injuries

Quantum computing, may be making more progress than you think: https://news.slashdot.org/story/16/...omputer-could-make-todays-encryption-obsolete

When I have good scratch I make tiny dust. I could mix it with epoxy I suppose...

On the face of it yes it looks good, but there is more to it than that, considering the massive advantages quantum computing would bring, and the speeds we cant even imagine, the technology is approx that of an abbacus compared to where it should get in the next 30 years. Even in 30 years time we will only have scratched the surface, quantum mechanics is established maths wise but engineering wise its in its infancy.

Edingburgh university has a machine thats researching the field, its 25million £ and state of the art, even they admit its little more than a gimick at the moment. But one day.................One day it will blow computing out the water, we are pretty close to what we can do normal computing wise, progress has slowed and we are starting to bump up against the limits of wafer density etc, so makes sense the nnext big thing is around the corner, only like say the 1970's computers, the new generation of quantum have 20-30 years of development to get to anywhere near useful. But it will happen .

As for Hammy as long as you give him Leds for eyes I will help